Clockwork
by Krahae
Summary: A small dream I have from time to time. Perhaps not truly belonging here, but here is what I have. I am unsure where to classify it... but it reminds me vaguely of something I had seen long ago, called Robot Carnival. Mind the rating.


Struggled to figure out what to do with this... so. Here you go.

-

**CLOCKWORK.**

I remember being.. asleep?

More like dead, really. An awareness of nothing. Not to say, aware of nothing, but knowing that all your senses are simply cut off from any stimulus. What thinking was done, slow, torpid. Syrup crawling along the surface of a mind.

_Click_.

That sound resounds inside my world, and just as it dies away a fire starts inside me and it forces my eyes open, and I want to scream but can't. Not yet. The fire spreads through me slow, languid, and with it's passing I feel. Skin wakes. Eyes can move. Fingers twitch. Slowly, minutes pass as I turn my head. The world is painted on old film, as I survey the room I'm in now.

Clean. Old. Dark. Sister. Toy. Couch.

Things assume names as I see them. Awareness of each is painful; my mind isn't working so well yet. Still slow. Not turning fast enough.

_Click_.

Fire rips into my body, starting somewhere in my gut. A sound like metal rending is in the air, and I realize I'm screaming. My eyes turn and there's my sister, smiling indulgently at me. She has coins in her hands. Warm hands. The pain subsides, and she looks over me again, at my sluggishness. She turns and I try to cry out but I can't, things aren't moving fast enough yet, and I can finally feel her, as she leans down and places her hand-

-scalding heat! So hot, so much pain!-

-on my back, before I tremble, expectant already my tongue on my lips, rasping.

_Click_.

Gasping, I reach out and rake gouges in the floor. The fire this time is less pain, more sensation. Skin leaps alive, and I can feel the lace she's dressed me in tonight. My vision clears, and the haze and grain of it recedes, like the fog in my mind. Movement isn't minutes of planning and expectation, more the extension of will, and I look up at her and smile. My face, unused to such things still, peels and cracks, the paint chipping.

"Almost awake, sister mine?" I hear her rasp, a voice like autumn branches on glass. Nodding, I test my limbs. Still slow, but passable. Each motion echoes in the room with a sound like a musicbox gone mad. The mirror on the far wall paints a picture of me, as it always does. And curious again I look-

-Arms and legs at odd angles, there is a toy here. Shaped like a woman, she sits, hunched and slumping in the floor of the room. Her hair is flaxen, almost golden if it weren't so filthy. There seems to be a patina of rust, disuse all about her body. The only new thing, would be the dress in a shocking, French blue. Small lace and flourish, it seems almost more a night-thing. Perhaps it is. Beneath it, the girl begins to move, her clockwork body clicking, groaning, rasping with every motion.-

Clockwork. I smile, and the sounds of the things that make me be grind and chime. I inspect my fingers as the slinking form that is my sister walks to the thing making noise on the couch. They are tin, perhaps. Rolled metal, sheathing things I've not seen underneath. The seams are old though, and under the aged metal I see a hint of red. Most of the seams that make me up are peeling, rolled back slightly or chipped and wicked in places.

I move carefully, so as to not damage the dress I have. It's pretty; very pretty. I feel like it matches my eyes and thank my sister quietly, my voice one more odd strand of music as the tune my body plays chimes about the room. Slowly I stand, inexpertly. Swaying, the room swims and I can see better the thing Sister has brought us.

A man, bound up, frantic is mumbling through a gag on the couch. Our couch. This place is home. The scene ignites memory, and the idea becomes familiar. I look to Sister as she inspects the toy, making sure each strand of wire holding him in place isn't too tight, but just enough. The edged metal spline was wicked stuff, and I smile, knowing she drew it from me at some point in the long night of my sleeping.

Her eyes, empty, bled slightly in the low light. Walking up noisily, the music of my body shifting as I stumble, she turns and smiles. I relax, seeing her doing so as well. Her mouth is a maw, fangs and wicked jagged rips of bone and blood fill it. I sit, kneeling by her as she works, tying and testing the man who lay, panicked and writhing on the couch.

Quite naked he was. She had removed whatever it was he had worn, perhaps it was this dress? No, it was too small for him. No matter – he strained under the wire a moment, and with a groan relaxed. Small beads of crimson welled at points in his binding, sharp contrast to his pale skin. All his energy went to his eyes, wet and rolling in his skull. They darted, pleaded, begged.

I reached out, entranced by the odd, shining orbs and my sister sharply rapped on my hand. "Patience, sister," were her only words of chastisement. I nodded, as she worked, standing in her place, as I folded my hands behind me. Carefully! as I didn't want to muss the lovely lace she's gifted me with.

Sister was beautiful. Lithe, like a cat she shimmied free of the billowing black lace she'd worn in. Her skin was a moon on the night, as she stood and stretched, smiling quiescent. Bone snapped and shifted, her skin a sheath containing her for the moment, as the man made more sounds.

He was so pleased to be here. I wonder a moment if Sister left his tongue this time.

Sighing, she slunk down and grinned at me, her lips splitting and reaching to her jawline with a small tearing sound. "Shall I start, sister?" she asked in her strange rasp. It reminds me of cloth tearing.

I chime for her to do so, please. I know I could not regardless. Though quite awake, my body wasn't fully working yet. Gears lay still, my body not fully alive. I look down, at the plastic and metal that mirror the curves of my sister.

Where she had delicate shoulders with graceful arms, my shoulder was a doll's joint, quite the same proportion, quite rusted and curled in splayed metal where tension had ripped the skin into wicked edges. Arms sprouted below, a flowing line of shining metal encasement, quite regal. Her neck was a swan's envy, below her jaw, which like mine, was thin and sharp. Our family wasn't one to excesses of form. She, like me, wasn't so much voluptuous as feminine, in a catlike sense. Her more so, as my body was anything but the supple slinking of a feline. Yet I mirrored her, my curvature crafted to be the goal she'd attain, after the one she'd achieved. Breasts heaved with her breathing, topped with tight, rosy nipples, where I had simple slopes of once-shined metal, pearled plastic. She was beautiful, as she leaned over the man and he tried to writhe.

Chuckling, probably at his seeming eagerness, she crawled up to him and smiled her brightest. My eyes were captivated by the rise of her thighs, hips as she swayed there for me, knowing how I loved to watch her move. So smooth and strange, her body was! How she moved without gears was a mystery, but we were sisters. I didn't question her odd circumstances. I saw her excitement glistening along her thighs, and smiled. She was quite pleased with this one.

I turned my attention to her face, to catch her engulf his member in her lips. Screaming against his gag, the man voiced his appreciation, excitement. Pride welled up inside me at her, how she always seemed to be so correct in such things. Her hair was flaxen and gold, to my ancient bronze, and it bobbed there over his hips, teasing the man. She spared him little in her ministrations, and I shivered, anticipating the future.

Soon she paused, leaning lower to tease the weight below his hardness with her tongue. His head thrashed back and forth, heedless of the wire and the little beads of crimson that flew from his motion sprayed us, the contact making Sister reel back and pant with her empty, bleeding eyes.

He lay there, whimpering at her absence, arousal evident in the gloom. She'd left him quite pristine for me! I reached over to thank her, but she shook her head slowly. Tilting my own, the chime of my question was subdued.

She stood then, and from her hand I saw the dangling key.

Ah. It was time.

I rose and moved toward the captivated toy, his eyes going wide and surprised when I inexpertly tried to remove the gown. I frowned, more paint flaking from my face as the edges of my fingers ruined the thing. Sighing, a sound like a bellows dying, I simply shredded it from the shoulder, letting it pool around me, a silken ruin.

His eyes were riveted to me. Gears in my belly ground and I painted a blush on my cheeks with a few drops of blood that had made their way to me. Quite unhappy was I to see him losing his ardor, as I kneeled over him. Sister was not amused either, but quite intent on my own happiness, assured me with a glance. She then moved from my vision, and relying on the mirror, I shivered, a crystal chime in my song.

The man, quite rapt, watched as I did.

Sister rose up and with her hand, held a shining, gleaming key. Something made of a bright metal, that perhaps one day was mine. It was nearly as long as her forearm, when it looked like a forearm. I closed my eyes, the soft click of my lids closing a herald.

_Clink_.

Pain like nothing before. I arched and screamed but could not move, not at all. The man's eye were rolling and darting in his head, as the scene played out.

_ClickClickClick...Click._

The key turned, and the air whistled faintly between my lips. Three more turns... and my body finally awoke to the moment at hand.

Gears clicking and whirring, I remembered things that in sleep and sleeping, forget. I am a doll. I look in the mirror, and see that I am, at once, very female, yet barely as large as a child. Thin, spindly. I run my knife-edged hands down my stomach, the hollowness of it barely rustling with old coins. Lower, lower and I feel the smallest, most delicate of my bodies gears working. Curled, thin metal and small valves, things so complex they make me wish for more blood to blush.

As the most complex parts of me awaken, so does the need. So empty, so hollow... I look at the man tied up on our couch and he meets my eyes. I think he sees in them, sees there what I intend and he would have fainted had my Sister not slinked back around me to him.

Quite shocked, he stiffened as she mounted him suddenly. The play continued, as it always did. She moved and writhed there, building his warmth from the core. I looked at us, in that mirror and saw the subtlety we shared.

I watched the joining of their bodes, glistening and wet for long minutes, as the man barely moved, eyes screwed up tight in his concentration. They always loved my Sister. So soft and perfect, in her barely adult body. Small like me, we complemented one another. It was a ruse, our similarity. Were were truly one intent... after all.

Gears whined and my body ached, needing. I moved beside my writhing Sister, watching as she broke herself against the man like cliffbound tides. Looking to the mirror, I could see her blank eyes, and knew she was waiting.

Reaching out, I caressed her back as it bent, shining slightly with sweat in her straining. Immediately she bucked and hissed, air snapping between her teeth as my fingers slashed into her skin. She never broke that contact with the man, though. His eyes opened as he heard her hiss and went panicked and wide.

Poor Sister. She tried so hard to keep up her motion, but finally arched back against my hands, as they broke through her ribs. The sounds of snapping bone and tearing flesh were loud, louder than his muted screams as I slipped inside the shell of my sister.

"Finally," we thought to each other as I blinked a red haze from my eyes. Gasping suddenly as the man shifted under, within me, smiled and ground my hips against him.

Quite enraptured he seemed. I writhed there, the white heat of my Sister's body around me as I did so. I knew this guise was fragile, much like the dress she'd gotten for me earlier. Each motion, each time I moved it was with the echo of my Sister, screaming her ecstasy in my mind, as the peeled edged and rolled knives of my body savaged her. All the while, her softness, her warmth enveloped both me and the man, as I drove us, the chiming of my body now a simple hum from within her flesh.

"Oh," I gasped, as something in me broke through and I felt him with my own metal skin suddenly. My pace quickened, as I knew the flesh I wore was already wearing away. I reached up, fingers trailing bloody rivers along my sides as I caressed the swell of my breasts. Hissing, I left my bloody hands to grasp at the man, causing his own muffled sounds to resound.

I was a thing, all gears and clockwork, and inside me was this unholy warmth. The cold of my body was tortured by it, as it spread into me slowly. I knew my body was quite harsh; the peeled metal and edges finally wearing against him. So delicate, he was. I watched as, much like what was inside me, he bled against the wire in small rivers, the crimson pooling under him.

With a gasp, I looked up at the mirror and in it, my eyes looked back. Blue, sharply so. Plastic and gleaming. Blue plastic eyes.

I was wearing my Sister away, tatters of her skin and bones holding them together like kiting. I stretched, and the sheathing of her arms slipped free, her body from hips to head sliding off and back from me like a shed jacket. I watched as she slipped from me, pooling like a gruesome ball gown on the ground. Soon, she'd reworked her broken form and rose, smiling her monster's smile over my shoulder.

I was slick with blood and shining like a trophy as I let my body spin into it's momentum. I felt the need for urgency, as the man below me was growing cooler, his sounds softer. Soon he'd be worn down, and try as I have, no amount of coins or keys restarted our toys. So, I hurried, and in my hurrying battered the man, bloodied him. My hands were soon braced on bones, where they rested along his chest. Curling my fingers into the handles of his ribs, I bucked and ground and screamed, as my Sister impaled me again with the key.

_ClickClickClick... Click._

I let my eyes roll back as my body twitched, my legs going rigid and crushing all that was left of the man below and inside me. As my vision cleared, I leaned down and kissed the still form, licking at the glass of my teeth after, tasting salt and copper.

Languid, cooling I slinked off the bed to the small place my sister kept for me, a cushion of red and silver that was long-since threadbare and crusted with grime of previous nights. I collapsed there as she pulled on her dress, again whole and unmarred by any blemish.

She was flesh and soft and curves. I was rigid, harsh form. Spent, my gears were slowing, and with them my awareness, my mind. I heard the singing of my body slowing, as my Sister reclad herself in the black, lacy gown that she wore away from me. As she turned I smiled at her again, and she returned it, a small flush to her cheeks.

The world grew cold and grayed at the edges. I could measure the time I had left of waking in a handful of minutes, as my lovely sibling came to my side, sitting with me in those cold moments.

"I love you," I managed to creak out, before my lips would stop working. As each time before, I reached up and the blades of a finger slipped behind an eye, the pain dull and easy as it came loose into a palm. Handing it to my Sister, I fixed my lips in a smile, as my vision, for a brief moment was torn.

I could see myself, prying an eye from a metal socket, while in the cross of the vision I watched as the Sister blinked one blue eye at her Clockwork sibling. Hands slow, the metal one finally released the eye into her palm, as it rolled about slowly, her last motion and awareness seeing her Sister smile, returning it with her own as the gears stopped. A ritual; a gift that always follows her waking, she passes on her eyes to the one who would go out into the world.

I stand and in the odd way of knowing, understand things fully again. At least for the moment. My Sister's eyes rest cool in my skull, as she sits restful, sleeping. I jingle coins in my hand as I turn, to go back out into a world of living things. One soul between us, I try and bring her presents, for when I wake her.


End file.
